The Tow Truck Driver and Work/Life Balance

“It’s weird- raincoats have the zipper on the other side of the coat. None of my other coats are this way.”

 

The AAA tow truck driver managed to pull the zipper up over his coveralls. It was raining, dark, and the temperature had dropped into the low 40s. My daughter had run over debris in the highway, and lost power. She was pulled over on I-70 in mid-Missouri, and I was trading cars with her so she could get back to college.

 

I had already helped moved the college senior’s belongings from her car to mind, just two feet off of the highway. Trucks sped by, shaking the car I sat in with my wife before the tow truck arrived.

 

“I was just sitting down to dinner when I got your call.”

 

“Wow- sorry you had to come out in this weather”, I said.

 

“Hey, no big deal- it’s part of the job”

 

The temperature continued to drop, and the truck driver said that he would meet me at my repair shop, which was an hour away. I followed him as he navigated his truck through a steady rain.

 

After figuring out logistics, moving gear from one car to another, and a two-hour round trip in the rain, my nerves were shot. As he unloaded my car from his truck, our conversation started again.

 

“Yeah, I was a truck driver for years, and switched to this job so I could be home more. Only one of my eight kids drives a truck- my son is getting back into town tonight, he’s been on the road for weeks.”

 

Eight kids?

 

The truck driver spent about 10 minutes unhooking the car from the trailer, tipping the flatbed, and backing the car into a parking spot. He swiped my credit card, emailed a receipt, and was on his way.

 

Now he’s driving back for an hour (or more) to get home, and he’s got to be wet and cold. I’m six blocks away.

 

Hard work.

 

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What are our beliefs about work, and balancing work with life? My view has certainly changed over the years, and a health scare in 2021 (which you can read about here) also impacted by outlook on work.

 

Now we have choices

 

In the beginning, many people did not have a choice regarding hard work. Just go back to worker conditions about 100 years ago. As an example, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a New York factory where 146 workers were killed by a fire in 1911.

 

“It was a true sweatshop, employing young immigrant women who worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines. Nearly all the workers were teenaged girls who did not speak English and worked 12 hours a day, every day.”

 

Brutal.

 

Several factors improved working conditions for millions of workers:

 

• National Labor Relations Act: Passed in 1935, this law protects a worker’s right to organize, defines a 40-hour workweek, and regulates overtime pay.

 

• Technology: Perhaps most important, technology reduced the amount of manual tasks required in the economy, particularly dangerous manual work. The telephone, automobile, and radio are just a few examples.

 

• Higher education: Over the past 100 years, a growing percentage of the workforce earned college degrees, and continuing education in all fields has become common. Nearly 94 million, or 42% of Americans age 25 or older have a college degree.

 

Finally, the pandemic has sharply increased the number of remote workers. Nearly 27% of US workers worked remotely in 2021.

 

Now we have choices. If you’re fortunate enough to get educated and develop a skill set, you can work a reasonable number of hours for an employer, or work on your own. Remote work means no commuting time, and a better lifestyle.

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m embracing the Steve Jobs wardrobe approach. My winter looks is running shoes, hiking pants, and pullover quarter zip sweater. Stay turned for my summer outfit…

 

Some people have a strong passion that drives them to work more hours.

 

Passion and work hours

 

“Opportunity is missed by most people, because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

 

I loved this quote from Thomas Edison. If you have a passion to achieve something difficult, you’re going to have to work a ton of hours to reach your goal. Here’s what Edison achieved:

 

“By the time he died on October 18, 1931, Thomas Edison had amassed a record 1,093 patents: 389 for electric light and power, 195 for the phonograph, 150 for the telegraph, 141 for storage batteries and 34 for the telephone.”

 

Wow.

 

Wayne Dyer once said: “If you do something without passion, it’s like dressing up a corpse.” To work big hours, there has to be some passion or purpose driving you.

 

Startup founders have a reputation for working huge hours, but this article explains how productivity drops off once a person works more than 50-55 hours a week. I know people who have worked 50-60 hours a week for decades, and seem to thrive on it.

 

Doing anything well: business, art, music, film- requires a high time investment. High achievement and long hours go hand in hand, and it’s difficult to get results without burning the midnight oil.

 

So, where does this discussion leave us?

 

Use technology- and your experience- to work smart (or smarter, you pick term).

 

Less hours with more focus

 

I often tell my kids that no one made more sales calls for less money than I did. I was an investment representation from ’85 to ’89, and I thought that simply grinding it out- with no plan- would pay off.

 

It didn’t. In fact, my wife was making as much as I was as a part-time waitress while in college.

 

My advice? (Not that you asked).

 

Make a plan, and use every tech tool you can find. Offload routine tasks to someone else. Fiverr and UpWork are two great resources to find help. I got business for years as a freelancer on UpWork.

 

Finally, find joy. My friend Joe owns a CPA firm, is one of the happiest people I know. Why not have fun along the way?

 

Food for thought.